Maliki as Rigoletto

It isn’t funny, but it is still hard to recount what is going on in Iraq with a straight face:  the prime minister has accused a vice president of helping (or ordering?) terrorists to try to kill him, the vice president and a deputy prime minister have fled to autonomous Kurdistan to avoid arrest, and their coalition in parliament has withdrawn its members but continues to occupy its ministerial posts.  Then this morning bombs explode at more than a dozen sites in Baghdad targeted mainly at Shia  This terrorist response to the prime minister’s accusations ironically tends to confirm them.

All of this comes with dramatic sectarian and ethnic overtones.  If Iraq were an opera, it would be composed by Verdi, not Mozart.  Rigoletto, who manages to bring about all the outcomes he most fears, comes to mind.

It is hard to picture a happy ending.  Michael Knights suggests several possible denouements.  First: Prime Minister Maliki and Vice President Hashimi might still work a deal to restore the status quo ante.  I doubt it, as five judges have supposedly signed Hashimi’s arrest warrant.  Hard to forget about that, or about today’s bombs.

Second:  the Kurds betray Hashemi and throw their support behind Maliki and his Shia allies, in exchange for concessions on their own demands.  There will be hell to pay for this in the Sunni community, as Knights also suggests.  And the Kurds have been fooled more than once by Maliki’s promises.  It is doubtful they are prepared to be fooled again.

I think the best outcome is in fact Knights’ third, which he regards as an outside possibility:  fall of the Maliki government in a parliamentary vote, with Kurds and the Sunni-based alliance Iraqiyya voting him out with support from the Shia-based Sadrists.  But the bombings today will encourage Maliki in his worst instincts.  Mass arrests?  Martial law?  Anything he can do to prevent Iraqiyya politicians from showing up in parliament will help preserve his hold on power.

Unfortunately the most likely outcome is an attempt by Maliki to use the forms of parliamentary democracy while establishing a de facto autocracy, as Reidar Visser suggests.  This would be a sad fulfillment of many prophecies.

There is a tendency to blame it all on the Americans.  I don’t see it that way.  Iraq’s sectarian and ethnic divisions were not invented in Washington, which withdrew troops from Iraq only after an extraordinary effort to stabilize the country.  What is going on now is essentially invented in Baghdad.

I have been relatively sanguine about the prospects for Iraqi democracy, despite all its difficulties.  Even now, it is notable that the arrest warrant for Tariq al Hashemi, the vice president, was signed, apparently by five judges.  Saddam Hussein did not bother with such niceties.  He used extra-judicial killings to enforce his rule. But it is hard to see a good outcome when the protagonist is so bent on moves that will destroy rather than cure his precious offspring. I repeat what I said six months ago:

Ultimately, whether Iraq continues to develop as a democracy or lapses into something more like its unfortunate past depends on the Iraqis themselves. They seem ambivalent. Some of them, at least on some days, appreciate the freedom they enjoy today, which far exceeds the norm in the Middle East as well as Iraq’s own past. They want more democracy, not less, as recent street protests have demonstrated.

Others, or maybe the same people on other days, are impatient with democratic processes and cry out for “action”—someone who will fix all that ails the country without bothering to consult, legislate or show respect for human rights. Any serious effort to restore autocracy in the whole country would be met with dramatic opposition, most likely organized on an ethnic or sectarian basis.

My guess is that the appreciation of democracy will prevail over the hope for a quick fix. We should certainly do what we can to try to help ensure that outcome.

Today my guess would be reversed: the hope for a quick fix may prevail over democracy. It is up to the Iraqis. We can do little to prevent that outcome.